As much as I wish they still had the original tapes, I have to admit I love the stories of the discovery of fan copies and lent tapes, and the groundbreaking restoration efforts. Honestly I think some of the techniques are just brilliant. The fact they figured out the color information on some episodes from the pixellation of the filmed images is amazing!

It's been a while since the last recovery of Doctor Who episodes, but it's good news all round.

The BBC revealed today that two complete episodes of Doctor Who have been returned to the BBC Archives.

Firstly, the complete third episode of the William Hartnell story Galaxy 4, Air Lock has been recovered - prior to this only a short segment from the first episode remained in the archive with no telesnaps taken to show how the third episode and its characters would have looked.

Secondly, the complete second episode of Patrick Troughton's third story The Underwater Menace has also been recovered - making this the earliest complete episode for the Second Doctor to now exist in the Archives (alongside the existing episode three).

Both episodes were found via former TVS engineer Terry Burnett, who bought them at a school fête in Marchwood, Southampton back in the 1980s! Restoration Team member Ralph Montagu told the Radio Times how they came to his attention:

I occasionally meet up with a group of film collectors and retired TV engineers at a café in Hampshire. A few months ago I spoke to Terry Burnett, who used to be an engineer at TVS [the former ITV franchise based in Southampton]. Somehow Doctor Who was mentioned in passing, and Terry said, ‘Oh, actually I think I’ve got an old episode. I thought it was bound to be something we’ve got already,” says Ralph. “I tried not to get too excited, but he came back the next day and brought this spool with him. It had no label, so I had a look at the film leader and it said ‘Air Lock’. I thought, ‘What’s that?’ I checked online and saw that Air Lock was an episode of Galaxy 4 - a missing Hartnell serial. So then I got very excited.

(meeting with Terry a couple of weeks later) And he said, ‘Guess what I’ve got.’ It was another episode of Doctor Who! Again not labelled on the can, but it turned out to be The Underwater Menace part two.”

Both episodes were shown this afternoon at the British Film Institute's Missing Believed Wiped event - the first time they've been seen in the United Kingdom since their original transmission! (Air Lock was originally seen on 25th September 1965, with The Underwater Menace episode two on 21st January 1968.) Screen shots from the episodes may be seen in the BBC's Doctor Who Adventure Calendar Day 11.

The episodes will require restoration work before they can be commercially released, with film damage to be repaired and missing censored clips to be re-instated. An announcement will be made by 2|Entertain next year as to when they are likely to appear on DVD. Meanwhile, the previous existing material for both stories can be found on the Lost in Time DVD boxed set.

These are the first full episodes to have been recovered since the 1965 Daleks' Master Plan episode Day of Armageddon turned up back in 2004, and brings the total missing episodes tally to 106.

Two classic episodes of Doctor Who - thought to be missing forever - have been returned to the BBC archive.

Episode 3 of the William Hartnell adventure "Galaxy 4" and Episode 2 of Patrick Troughton's "The Underwater Menace" were purchased by film collector Terry Burnett at a village fete near Southampton in the early 80s. He had been unaware that the canisters contained material missing from the BBC.

Thanks to the kind loan by Mr Burnett, the classic footage has been shown today at the British Film Institute's annual "Missing Believed Wiped" event at the National Film Theatre in London. Host at the event was Doctor Who writer and actor Mark Gatiss who said: "Christmas has come early for Doctor Who fans everywhere. It's always wonderful when a missing episode turns up but it's been years since the last one so to have two is just brilliant. Add to that a proper bit of action from the legendary Chumblies (and the horrifying Rills!) plus the utterly mesmeric Patrick Troughton on great form. Well, what more could we all ask for?"

Over 100 episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s still remain missing. The tapes were routinely wiped once the rights to repeat them had expired. It seems unfathomable to us today, but before the advent of DVDs and iPlayer, grainy black and white material was thought to no longer be of interest to the television audience. However, many film prints sold overseas have since been returned. These latest discoveries are the first complete episodes to have been located since 2004.

None of the four episodes of the 1965 adventure "Galaxy 4" were known to have survived, although a short extract had been retained. "The Underwater Menace" dating from 1967 is now the earliest surviving complete episode featuring Patrick Troughton's performance as the Second Doctor.

Research has shown that the returned episodes originated from the ABC channel in Australia. In fact, the copy of The Underwater Menace is still missing a few short sections which were removed by the Australian censors upon its original transmission Down Under. Fresh scans of the missing material have been made by the National Archives of Australia and will be incorporated into the restored episodes ahead of a DVD release.

Details of a commercial release will be announced by 2 entertain in 2012.

It's been 7 years since the last missing episode was found, and fans had started to give up al hope, how did the latest find come about?

This discovery was made by two people, Ralph Montagu and a film collector meeting and realising there was a bit of a connection. Ralph was working on the Dr. Who restorations in the past and Terry Burnett had some film, but didn't know what.

What kind of condition were the stories in when they were returned to you and how much work will there need to be applied to their full restoration?

There's a lot of work to be done on both episodes. Air Lock is missing the last 27 seconds of action and the closing credits. There are many scratches and scuffs plus the usual issues we have with black and white film recordings such as off-locks, videotape dropout etc... Some of the damage will take a lot longer to repair than usual. Underwater Menace poses a different set of problems as well as the more usual. Firstly, it's the ABC's censored print, so the censor clips need to be re-instated. We've already had the clips re-scanned by the National Archives of Australia who have been very helpful. There are numerous film breaks, missing frames, deep scratches etc... and a two second section missing in the middle. That will be the most challenging repair.

How hard was it keeping this news under your hat for so long?

Keeping the discovery quiet wasn't a problem. We just didn't tell anyone. But some news did leak out and there are always one or two people who because of their small minds feel they must be the one to tell the world, even though they have nothing to do with the discovery and weren't even attending Missing Believed Wiped. Most people who needed to be told towards the end, because we were screening the material at a public event had the good sense to keep the secret and make it the truly memorable screening it turned out to be.

Is there anything you feel the public can do to help in the search for missing serials, what are your hopes for future missing material, and do you believe there is a chance more may be found?

There are 106 episodes missing from the BBC, but I don't think there are 106 episodes missing in the world. Now, I don't want to get peoples hopes up. I've been mis-quoted before, but I am certain there are episodes out there with private collectors. I know fans are excited by these finds and rightly so, but we're also looking for other lost programmes as well. Yesterday, the BFI screened the Dennis Potter 'Emergency Ward 9', found by a friend of mine Ian Beard. That is an incredible and far more important discovery in my view that the Doctor Whos, yet we're all talking about Hartnell and Troughton eps. I of course understand why, but I think more recoveries like this are more likely if people don't go round asking about lost DW, but black and white TV material in general. So, yes. More material will surface, but I don't know when.

BAFTA Wales are to present a special event featuring the screening of the two recently rediscovered episodes, Galaxy 4: Air Lock and The Underwater Menace: Episode Two. The event will also feature a Q&A with stars Peter Purves, Anneke Wills and Frazer Hines, plus a guest from the current production.

The event is to take place at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff on 9th May 2012, booking to open shortly.

As a Doctor Who website, posting a news item relating to missing Doctor Who episodes is a particularly conflictive task. On one hand you want to hold off on posting news due to the possible reaction you might get from smaller circles of fandom, whereas on the other hand, it's surely our duty to report it - after all, news is news, right?

Some of our readers may remember a news item we posted a few years ago about the possibility that The Web Of Fear may have been found - note the words 'possibility' and 'may'. While we also added that our source was reliable in the past and had no reason to disbelieve them, this particular news item turned out to hit a dead end and despite the majority of our readers who were grateful for the reporting of the story, we did face a backlash from some smaller circles of fandom on online forums.

A couple of days ago, Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool News, posted a news item relating to some of the rumours that have been doing the rounds for the past few months - rumours that, up until now, we have avoided reporting on.

The rumour is that a considerable number of lost Doctor Who episodes have been found by "an eccentric engineer who worked for broadcasters across Africa with a taste for science fiction and a habit of taking things for safe keeping".

DWO can confirm that we have been approached with news from several high-profile sources, some of which confirm these rumours and some that conflict with them and the actual figure of the number of episodes rumoured to have been found.

Whilst it would be easy to blurt out everything we have been told, we retain the caution from previous rumours and hoaxes, and will simply hold out for official confirmation - when and if it comes. What we will say is that *should* the rumours be true, despite the initial excitement at the possibility, it would be wise to sit back and let the BBC do what they need to do to secure these episodes *if* in fact they have been found.

As a Doctor Who website, posting a news item relating to missing Doctor Who episodes is a particularly conflictive task. On one hand you want to hold off on posting news due to the possible reaction you might get from smaller circles of fandom, whereas on the other hand, it's surely our duty to report it - after all, news is news, right?

Some of our readers may remember a news item we posted a few years ago about the possibility that The Web Of Fear may have been found - note the words 'possibility' and 'may'. While we also added that our source was reliable in the past and had no reason to disbelieve them, this particular news item turned out to hit a dead end and despite the majority of our readers who were grateful for the reporting of the story, we did face a backlash from some smaller circles of fandom on online forums.

A couple of days ago, Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool News, posted a news item relating to some of the rumours that have been doing the rounds for the past few months - rumours that, up until now, we have avoided reporting on.

The rumour is that a considerable number of lost Doctor Who episodes have been found by "an eccentric engineer who worked for broadcasters across Africa with a taste for science fiction and a habit of taking things for safe keeping".

DWO can confirm that we have been approached with news from several high-profile sources, some of which confirm these rumours and some that conflict with them and the actual figure of the number of episodes rumoured to have been found.

Whilst it would be easy to blurt out everything we have been told, we retain the caution from previous rumours and hoaxes, and will simply hold out for official confirmation - when and if it comes. What we will say is that *should* the rumours be true, despite the initial excitement at the possibility, it would be wise to sit back and let the BBC do what they need to do to secure these episodes *if* in fact they have been found.

I wonder how many missing Pat Troughton serials they found? I wish I could watch the complete "The Invasion", "The Faceless Ones", "The Enemy of the World", "Fury from the Deep" or "The Ice Warriors" or any Daleks or Cybermen serials.

Hmmmmmmm...they've been burned before...I will watch cautiously for more news...for reasons I won't go into here, I do know details of the rumours...but I refuse to get excited until I have something concrete to be excited about.

Longtime fans of the original Doctor Who program already know, and for those readers that are new to being "Whovians" then we'll point out that WikiPedia has an excellent entry about missing episodes of the show, and how the BBC wiped/"junked" over a hundred Doctor Who episodes from the first two Doctors (William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton). But, to briefly explain: each storyline/arc/serial in the show was (almost) always made up of several episodes, and back in the early 60s there was not any home video technology, and in the U.K. at the time reruns were not a common practice. So there was no pressing reason to save TV programs for future use, and every reason to blank those videotapes to free them up for re-use.

So all those early episodes routinely went away, and the only reason we have ANY of the stories from that era are because some staffers took home tapes of favorite episodes, and other episodes were found stored in foreign countries from when Doctor Who was farmed out to overseas markets. A few serials, like Story #046: The Invasion and Story #008: The Reign of Terror, had some episodes found that way, but not the entire arc. For DVD releases of those stories, the BBC has commissioned firms to re-create the missing footage with animation, and matched that with soundtracks that fans recorded at the time of the original broadcast with their home tape recorders (the audio was cleaned up and remastered for the DVDs, of course). Two upcoming DVD titles, Story #039: The Ice Warriors and Story #029: The Tenth Planet, are expected to included episode restored via animation. Other serials with some episodes available, but not enough to go the animation route, had those installments released on DVD quite some time ago, via the "Lost In Time" box sets.

But those are the success stories. Some serials, however, are missing entirely because no surviving episodes have been found since. Serials which remain completely unfound, and therefore have never been expected to be seen on DVD at all, are as follows: Story #004: Marco Polo; Story #018: Galaxy 4**; Story #019: Mission to the Unknown; Story #020: The Myth Makers; Story #022: The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve; Story #026: The Savages; Story #028: The Smugglers; Story #030: The Power of the Daleks; Story #031: The Highlanders; Story #034: The Macra Terror; Story #042: Fury from the Deep.

Since November 23rd of this year, 2013, marks the 50th Anniversary of the show's original debut on the BBC, wouldn't it be incredible to be able to get some good news about those missing episodes? Well, there are rumors...

Thanks to posts on various social media sites, it came to my attention this morning that Blastr.com had yesterday posted a write-up concerning information they themselves saw at BleedingCool.com (link to that can be found in Blastr's story). We can't really say it any better than the folks at Blastr did, so we'll just quote a snippet of their story: ...But now a new rumor makes it sound like the BBC has hit the mother lode. Bleeding Cool is reporting that "BBC have secured a large number of presumed-wiped episodes of early Doctor Who."

The report indicates that entire serials that were presumed lost, including some from the elusive William Hartnell era, have been recovered and could debut later this year on television - just in time for the iconic series' 50th-anniversary celebration...

...There's still no confirmation from the BBC, but we have our fingers crossed. Wait, that says quite a bit, but there's something missing. Where did they supposedly find these at? For that we have to go back to the original write-up at Bleeding Cool: ...What I've been hearing, and some of it is attributed to an eccentric engineer who worked for broadcasters across Africa with a taste for science fiction and a habit of taking things for "safe keeping," is that the BBC have secured a large number of presumed-wiped episodes of early Doctor Who.

And there are lots. Lots and lots. Completed serials that we've only had incomplete before, full series that nothing existed of. Not everything. But heaps and heaps. Possibly even The Full Hartnell.

And come November, or before, we'll get to see them... Okay, TVShowsOnDVD readers, you're thinking, "but wait; this is just rumor...why tell us this if you're not absolutely sure?" Well good, we hope(!) you're thinking that way, because we don't plan to follow up on this gossip until and unless the BBC actually announces something. Hopefully something for DVD, that is. Which, if they HAVE found missing classic Doctor Who episodes, you can bet your bottom dollar (pound? euro?) that those will make it to DVD sooner or later. After all, the list of available episodes which are unreleased-to-DVD has been shrinking fast for a while now. So the BBC selling the currently-missing installments to fans on home video is a win-win for everybody.

But there's one piece of the write-up which makes us feel comfortable enough to share this rumor with you, our readers. That's this: at the end of the original Bleeding Cool article, writer Rich Johnston posted a little addendum which sounds VERY hopeful that this is more than gossip. He says, "UPDATE: Shortly after posting, I received further confirmation of the details listed above from another, better connected source. I don't think I need to cross my fingers quite so hard any more." Now THAT sounds promising. As a longtime Whovian (much longer than the creation of that oh-so-apt fan-describing word!), this excites me to no end. We hope to have good news for you in the future, so stay tuned!

**CORRECTION (6/17): We mistakenly reported above that one of the stories which was completely missing is Story #018: Galaxy 4. At the end of 2011, the third episode of that arc, "Air Lock," was rediscovered. In March of this year that installment of the serial was included as part of the bonus material in the BBC release of Doctor Who - Story #006: The Aztecs: Special Edition on DVD. Our thanks to all the Whovians that wrote in with that correction, and I offer my regrets for temporarily forgetting about it while doing my write-up on Friday. IF the above rumor is true, then maybe we can hope that the remaining three installments of this story will have been recovered!

UPDATE (6/18): - Yesterday the Bleeding Cool website added a new post which appears to be backpeddling from this gossip, and suggesting that anyone trying to sell the BBC old material from the "wiping/junking era" - including non-Who material as well as classic DW episodes - could possibly be perpetuating a hoax. We'll let you, the reader, decide for yourselves...but this morning we find ourselves considerably less hopeful and enthusiastic than we had been. Still, we'll always be hopeful that these might turn up at some point! And there could still be something to these current rumors. We'll see, I suppose...

Typical if they find some of these now that I've "struggled" my way through the Hartnell and Troughton eras with all the 'restorations' from Loose Cannon and the like -- which are basically stills with sound and occasional text passing by. They're quite dated by now and the picture and sound quality is rather poor.

I don't understand why they haven't made more FULL animation replacements, like they did for two episodes in "The Invasion". I realize it's expensive and all, but there should be a demand for it.

In any case, let's hope they uncover more of those episodes in the years to come.

There are also missing elements in the Pertwee era, although mostly a matter of replacing black and white footage with the colour footage that was originally used.

This reminds me of the old days at Warner Bros and Disney where they wiped finished animation cels clean after they were photographed for the animation process, so they could be reused for new projects. No one saw any value in them, and they were just part of the process in creating the finished product.